We would be together and have our books
by White Butterfly
Summary: They court each other with books: or, how Jane and Loki fall in love as they exchange books and words with each other. Completed for Lokane Week 2018 - Science and Magic


**Title:** We would be together and have our books

**Character/Pairing:** Jane Foster/Loki  
**Genre:** Romance  
**Rating:** PG  
**Theme/Prompt:** Lokane week 2018 - day one: science and magic

* * *

He courts her with books. At first they are ones liberated from schoolrooms, then ones borrowed from Asgard's many libraries before finally lending her volumes from his own collection.

Jane's fascinated by the thin school books, written in light rather than fragile paper, and takes to them quickly, the technology apparently very similar to some Midgardian tomes. Loki's a little surprised but mostly enthralled by how quickly Jane masters the concepts within, even those in the longer bound texts he had to read during his last years of tutoring, and strives to ensure she always has a book from him to read. It's an excuse, really, to visit Midgard more often and to gift Jane with affection away from the eyes of his family and the Asgardian public.

Jane visits Asgard, and him, almost as often. She pretends that it's merely to return the books she's been lent, or to use the observatory to perform measurements that she has no ability or means to on Midgard. It's during one of Jane's trips to Asgard he brings her a book of bedtime stories that Frigga used to read to him and Thor.

They read it together in one of the gardened terraces of the palace. It's not the fanciful tales the royal nurses favoured, nor the tales of battles that Odin told, but instead stories of Yggdrasil and how the worlds she supports work. There's a tale about the shape of Yggdrasil's seeds that Jane is particularly fascinated by, her hands moving in an echo of the words Loki reads aloud.

They're absorbed in their reading for hours until Frigga has to fetch them herself for the evening meal. She smiles slyly at their intimacy before announcing her presence, calling for them.  
They don't startle much, bodies merely curved inward over the shared book laying in Loki's lap, but Frigga sees disappointment in Jane's face nevertheless, even as Loki gently closes the book and hands it to her and bids her to keep it.

It's the first of the many delicately illuminated books from his own library that Loki gifts to Jane.

Jane returns his attention and affection in her own way. She shares her own books of course, dog-eared books neatly catalogued on the fly page with her father's name and the year of purchase, water stained novels that have survived multiple moves across countries, freshly purchased tomes that have not yet had the chance to capture the scent of her life within their pages. But she also shares the many sheaves of paper that make up her dissertation, the overflowing folders that constitutes her current work.

The most precious, not to Jane but to Loki, are the small scraps that litter Jane's work space, fragments of prose from other scientists describing how every living thing is itself made of stars and the improbability of chance that brought those elements together.

There is not much poetry written about magic on Asgard, the topic not considered worthy of most skalds, and Loki finds the verses enthralling. Jane mentions once that they aren't even supposed to be poetic, just that humans have wondered about the stars for so long that entire mythologies have sprung up around them. That the first words and numbers written that weren't tallies of animals were talking about stars and calculating their movements.

Loki quietly lifts the scraps from where they lie, tucking the fragments carefully away, treasuring the words as if they were jewels.

One way or another, they all make their way into a book bound in leather as velvety dark as the skies they describe: some pasted in, others carefully copied out. It feels selfish to hoard these words for himself, but the round swirls of Jane's scribbled writing and the regular shapes of Midgardian printing offer a comfort that does not exist on Asgard. A comfort he knows Jane would share with him freely, but one that he's not confident enough to express his desire for.

It turns out that he doesn't need to ask, not when Jane is as keen an observer as she is. After one visit, as he makes to return to Asgard, she presses a kiss to his cheek and a book into his hands. Loki doesn't spare it a glance, instead insisting on receiving another kiss from Jane. Only once he's in the palace again is he able to take a closer look. It's a tome about both astronomy and poetry, and under the dedication made out to her, Jane has written her own to Loki, telling him to keep it as long as he will stop taking her notes. The words bring a smile to his face, as well as a wave of longing that has him looking out to the Bifrost once he's finished with it.

—

They are not betrothed, not yet, but there is an understanding that Dr Jane Foster of Midgard is allowed within the Prince's rooms, so she is unchallenged when she slips in to retrieve a volume he had spoken of before dinner.  
Loki's desk is much like her own on Earth, organised in a system familiar only to its owner. Rummaging through the piles of books, Jane smiles when she finds both a copy of her dissertation and the book she'd given him when she'd noticed the poetry she kept around to inspire her kept going missing. Stacked with them is a black-bound book that Jane flicks through to see if it's the one she's looking for.

What she finds instead is a collection of all her missing post-it notes and scraps of paper — the quote from her coffee mug copied out in Loki's angular hand, the photocopy of a poem by Pablo Neruda that Isabel had given her after she'd been Puente Antiguo for six months. It's not just the words that inspire her Jane notices as she continues to page through the scrapbook, but also her own. There's a note in her own handwriting complete with frowny face, complaining about funding, an observation she had scrawled in the margin of a dataset. Both have been assembled together with care, and, Jane thinks as she carefully stacks it back into place with the two other books she's given him, love.

There's parchment and ink on the desk of course and, deciding that the book she came looking for can wait, Jane writes out a note to Loki. Ink dried, she places it on top of the books that, one way or another, she's gifted to him.

_Yggdrasil grows tall,  
__Epochs will cycle, but I'll  
__Stay forever, just ask_


End file.
